curriculum vitae

you want a problem solver who can work within massive open-source codebases, deploy spam detection systems at Facebook scale, work around Amazon's API request limitations to grab millions of book covers, and port Ruby to C++ without prior Ruby experience.

you want an enthusiastic engineer who can pick up anything from statistical machine translation to Python web applications development. you want a passionate programmer who learns Scheme and Haskell while solving Project Euler problems in his spare time.

you want a compulsive achiever who writes 50 000 words in a month, takes bike trips across continents, speaks French, volunteers with environmental organizations, and still has time to enjoy parkour. you want more than a pair of hands: you want a communicator, a contributor, a mentor.

• Built search for groups content end-to-end, from backend indexing and realtime update infrastructure to UI work
• Developed a system to monitor resource usage of Search backends and prevent spikes in traffic
• Optimized the JavaScript-based CSS package loading framework

• Provided tutoring and assistance for first-year students in mathematics
• Offered help with course material in Linear Algebra and Calculus

• Developed a real-time spam detection system capable of handling millions of user messages per second
• Tested and deployed an internal Thrift service for QR code generation, using my own port of rQRCode to C++

• Designed and implemented a module to cluster similar phrases, then scaled it to handle the 2008 GALE Chinese-English corpus
• Implemented bilingual sentence segmentation within PORTAGE, reducing HMM alignment model training time by 80-90%

• Used Javascript cross-domain communication techniques and C++ in a pilot project to optimize AdSense request flow
• Wrote a Google Spreadsheets widget for generating heightmaps

• Developed an application in C++ to compare the performance of Approximate Nearest Neighbour algorithms
• Helped build and release Ideé Labs, a Pylons-based web application featuring visual search across millions of images
• Used Python and Amazon APIs to develop a distributed parallel tool for downloading millions of book covers

• Designed, built, and deployed the Bike to the Earth website using CouchDB, Pylons, and jQuery
• Wrote proof-of-concept functionality to create daily maps from GPS readings using gpsd, Python, and Google Static Maps API
• Wrote proof-of-concept functionality to compile videos from frames taken using an inexpensive handlebar-mounted webcam

• Designed and deployed this online CV using jQuery

• Participated in a unique open-source projects course offered in collaboration with several universities worldwide
• Worked to improve vCard import, export, and parsing in Mozilla Thunderbird

• Reverse-engineered the online player at CBC Radio 3 New Music Canada to find URLs to MP3s
• Built Python scripts for listing and downloading MP3s

• Organize talks by leading renewable energy experts on campus
• Develop administration tools for the STEP website

• 90% cumulative major average
• took a minor in Combinatorics and Optimization, with a minor average of 89%
• completed senior-level courses in Real-Time Programming, Computer Graphics, Functional Programming, Artificial Intelligence, Public-Key Cryptography, and Algorithms

• Designates students in excellent standing with degree major averages of 87% or greater

• Wrote In Silico in one month

• Designates students in excellent standing with term averages of 87% or greater

• Awarded to applicants with outstanding scholastic standing, strong interpersonal skills, and entrepreneurial spirit